Would the disable device ability be worth it on a non-rogue or bard archeologist character? Having a 14 dex, would your DC's ever be high enough to be effecient at it? I am considering taking the Goldfinger trait so its a class skill on an Inquisitor (in case there is no Rogue at the table during PFS events), but I dont know if the skill will be high enough to be efficient wihout rogue bonuses to it at later levels.

Depends on your gm. I'm playing a Zen Archer who acts as the party trapbuster, and it works quite well. Traps are mechanical for a long while. I plan to eventually dabble in Trapper ranger so I can bust magic traps, but not until 7 or so...

finding traps is more important than disabling them. once they're known they can be triggered by something summoned or conjured. get a wand of unseen servant, it will last an hour and is immune to any trap that cannot do area damage.

finding traps is more important than disabling them. once they're known they can be triggered by something summoned or conjured. get a wand of unseen servant, it will last an hour and is immune to any trap that cannot do area damage.

Unseen servant can only exert 20 lbs of pressure, which means it will be unable to affect a great number of traps. Being able to defeat traps the old fashioned way is never a bad idea.

Yeah, I recommend a wand of Mount over Unseen Servant for trap triggering.

Mounts last an hour, too, have plenty of weight to trigger traps, can carry quite a lot when they're not being sacrificed to the trap gods, and they can exert much more force for other things like kicking open doors or whatever. Hey, they can even survive low levels of area damage!

Oh, and don't worry, they should be able to fit anywhere the PCs can, because you can summon a large horse or a medium pony with it.

I wouldn't worry about it too much. Taking the trait should be plenty.

Traps are somewhat rare in PFS and many of the ones that do exist can't practically be disabled. Most of the rest can be triggered by a long pole or an unseen servant or just healed through with wands.

As for locked doors, knock and silence are both on your spell list. They don't always work, though. Knock can fail and silence requires a BSF who doesn't mind getting his axe blade nicked.

Edit: The problem with Mount as a trap detector is that fact that if you're not riding it or telling it to come, heel, or stay it's a DC 25 Handle Animal check to push it to kick in a door or go walk over where you're pointing. (That's assuming they're trained for riding, as the spell does not mentioned combat. Combat training still probably doesn't cover triggering traps.)

Yeah, I recommend a wand of Mount over Unseen Servant for trap triggering.

Mounts last an hour, too, have plenty of weight to trigger traps, can carry quite a lot when they're not being sacrificed to the trap gods, and they can exert much more force for other things like kicking open doors or whatever. Hey, they can even survive low levels of area damage!

Oh, and don't worry, they should be able to fit anywhere the PCs can, because you can summon a large horse or a medium pony with it.

Only problem there being the lack of opposable digits. =p Maybe your gm is cool with you cheesing traps with level 1 spells (Seems like a lot of people use that tactic on the boards). I know mine would just alter the traps so as to not be triggerable by those critters...

I know mine would just alter the traps so as to not be triggerable by those critters...

That is outright metagaming, and GMs shouldn't do that anymore than players should.

That said, for what it's worth, I suggest it, but I've never done it. It feels silly and traps have never been that big a deal. I mean, what else is the Rogue going to do to feel useful?

Erm, it's the GMs job to metagame. Without adjusting encounters to the party's relative strengths and weaknesses, encounters can become totally trivial, or impossible. Traps are meant to provide a challenge, or else they just shouldn't be in the game. May as well just have the party pay a $200gp tax at the entrance of the dungeon to deactivate them all. If the players find a cheesy/easy way to get around traps, then it's the gms duty to find a way to keep them challenging/interesting. Having a summoned horse run around the dungeon setting off traps definitely qualifies as 'cheesy' in my book, and I'm sure in my gms as well. In my world, I would just rule that summoned mounts don't exert as much weight as a normal horse would. They aren't weightless, per se, (no walking on water) but they definitely don't set off pressure plates and the like...

Well, I guess the metagaming might get out of hand when it keeps getting extremely specific because your party is very creative. After some point, EVERY single dungeon trap is always designed not to activate if you do not have enough pressure, life force, intelligence, not being a summoned outsider, invisible, great invisible, etc? Really? No one decided to call it a day and go to the tavern after they covered 99 contingencies?

Maybe just make a table and randomly role which of the known techniques work, randomly roll, and let them either waste their time trying each one every time or come up with some new techniques. Of course some of the more reasonable triggers, effects, and such can be seen as just basic for that trap level though. It is all a fine balance of our sense of disbelief I suppose. GM's have a hard job, especially since every gamer is looking for ways to beat the system.

unseen servant has opposable thumbs. or force effects that recreate them. they can do anything a str 2 character can.

if you look at most traps they are almost always triggered by 2 things. opening something, or standing in a location. unseen servant triggers all the opening door/chest/container traps, mount triggers all weight traps.

if your GM likes to screw you out of imaginative uses to get around traps, put some rocks on that mount to make it weigh enough. use a metamagic reach - open cantrip to open that trapped container/door.

there will always be ways to get around traps. if you as a gm have to just say it doesn't work (completely ignoring spell descriptions), then you are a bad gm. the players create imaginative ways to trigger traps without being personally harmed, you should come up with imaginative ways to HIDE them. the difficulty should be in FINDING them. if you create clever adaptations of the rules yourself to make traps HARD TO FIND and not HARD TO TRIGGER, there are lots of illusions or just clever uses of mundane items to keep people from finding your traps. you can do the same thing your players do, find creative ways to use the rules as written. making a spell not do what it is supposed to do because you don't like it is bad form.

and btw, having the magical lineage trait for open/close cantrip then applying a metamagic reach to it to do it from 100+ feet away would let you still do it as a cantrip to every door or chest you come across.

also, another mean GM trick would be just make the trap affect everything in the chest too, exploding all the potions/scrolls and maybe other magic items. that would be a LEGITIMATE way to make disable device useful and wanted by your players in your campaign.

Unseen servant can only exert 20 pounds of force. That's not enough to trigger a trap on a heavy iron door that's stuck shut, nor to lift the lid of an ancient, rusted chest.

And none of the ideas you've mentioned are 'creative or interesting' in the least. Nor are they original. They are all ideas that have been tossed around the boards for years and involve an irrelevant expenditure of gold to completely negate a rather central aspect of dungeoneering.

Coming up with truly creative ideas on the spot... figuring out interesting, one-time uses of gear and/or spells to negate a particular trap based on it's particular design or environment, absolutely. Defeating every trap in the dungeon with a couple hundred gold? Not so much.

Now, if nobody in the party has any interest in playing a trapbuster, then just ask the DM to leave out traps. That's a LEGITIMATE way of negating traps that doesn't stink of gouda.

Automatically resetting traps. Go ahead and summon all the sacrificial horses you want. That thing will still get you. And if you try to time it to get past, well there's another trap beyond it that you didn't trigger yet.

Or if you don't like that, falling boulder trap. Great, you set it off. Now there's a 10 ton rock blocking the passageway, genius. Alternatively, pit trap with safe stepping spots. Step on the wrong spot, the whole thing falls away into a pit of horrible death.

As many people have said without trap finding you can't disarm magical traps with disable device. While this is true you are also playing an inquisitor which is a full caster level class with dispel magic on its spell list. That combination should allow you to deal with any traps you find. Use the disable device for mundane traps and opening locks and simply dispel any magical traps you find. The only problem you may run into is having to search for traps. Both the rogue and the archeologist bard can pick up the rogue talent trap spotter so automatically get a roll even if they are not searching.

Yeah, I was originally talking about the traps you come across in PFS, and since you are not always going to have a rogue at the table, I decided to pick up disable device. I like the idea of an inquisitor rogue type, but just wasn't sure how the DC's worked on traps and if having the skill as a class skill without rogue bonuses would be enough. Thanks everyone for the info.